


Love And What Is

by binz



Category: Dresden Files - Butcher
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-20
Updated: 2009-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-04 19:07:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/binz/pseuds/binz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charity and Harry aren't friends, but they're fighting on different fronts of the same war. Spoilers for Turn Coat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love And What Is

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Minna Leigh (minnaleigh)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/minnaleigh/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! Thanks to everyone who looked this over and/or listened to me babble about it.

It wasn't quite half past five, but the sun set so early that time of year that the sky had been dark for an hour and the stars had come out, dim and distant where they were visible between the patches of cloud and the high-reaching skyline. The traffic lights switched from amber to red and were bright enough to make her squint; Charity glanced up to the rear-view mirror at the line of dark cars behind her, and then at her children, bundled in winter jackets and boots and snug in their seats.

"Harry," she said to her youngest son, tucked into the far passenger-side seat at the back of the minivan. "Don't draw on the window, please."

Harry ducked his head, the giant orange pom-pom on the top of his knit hat bobbing, and grinned at her, his eyes alight with a shade of mischief that made her wonder, not for the first time, at how much he was going to take after his namesake.

"Ew, Harry," Amanda said, looking up from her cell phone and twisting in her middle row bucket seat to glare back at her brother. "We have to sit back there too, you know."

Harry giggled into his hands, and Charity could see Amanda's eyes roll as clear as day. She caught her daughter's gaze in the mirror and raised an eyebrow. Amanda had the good grace to look embarrassed, and ducked her chin, mouthing 'sorry, Mama'. Hope, beside Charity in the front passenger seat, peered over her shoulder and giggled as Harry made faces, but neither she nor Harry pressed the issue.

The light turned green, and Charity reached out to turn on the CD player as the line of traffic started forward, the red parade of brake lights dimming, and the van filled with jingling bells and sleigh rides and winter cheer. By the time the hippopotamus song started, Amanda and Harry were singing along, Harry trying his hardest to out-bellow Amanda and the speakers. When Charity pulled to a stop in front of the shopping mall, it was 'Six White Boomers', and they were all bouncing playfully in their seats along to the chorus.

As soon as the van stilled, Amanda grabbed her purse, flipped the ends of her scarf over her shoulder, and slid out the side door with the ease of years of practice. Charity shot a glance at the dashboard clock, and said, "Nine o'clock, young lady; and not a minute later. These doors. Phone if you can't see me or if you want to be picked up earlier, and leave your phone _on_."

"Yes, Mama," Amanda said, quick and rushed through a distracted smile, and Charity could see her friends through the glass entrance doors; she smiled politely, and waved back when they waved at her. "Love you," she told Amanda. "Call if there's a problem or you need anything."

It was another ten minutes to the community rec center after that, and Charity idled in a parking stall while Hope and Harry gathered their things, swinging sports bags almost as big as they were out the door and following carefully, or with a flying leap that ended with Harry flailing in a dangerous-looking skid on the dirty ice of the parking lot.

"_Careful_, Harry," Charity said. "You'll break a bone; and it will be pretty hard to swim at the meet in January with a cast on, won't it, mister? Hope, do you have your permission form?"

Hope nodded, unwrapping her earbuds from around her neck, and shoving them into her coat pocket. The wide white legs of her _gi_ were half-stuffed into the tops of her bright pink Sorels, and half-bunched at the tops. "Do you have your form and deposit, Harry?"

Harry's mouth dropped open, comically wide with earnestness, and he lunged back inside the van, emerging with an envelope clutched in his fist. "Yes!"

"Make sure he hands it in, please," Charity said to Hope. "And don't think that your sister is going to do your work for you," she added to Harry. "You have to take responsibility too. Love you both; have fun. See you when you're done."

She watched them go, waiting until the heavy entrance door closed behind them before she pulled out and freed up the spot for another minivan just arriving, waving at the father driving. His oldest was in Alicia's grade, and his youngest was in the same jujitsu class as Hope. Charity could see the girl out of her side mirror when she merged back onto the street, a bright purple snowsuit dashing for the rec center door.

Charity stopped for gas a few blocks later, stood in line behind a couple of kids younger than Matthew but older than Alicia with their arms crossed over each others' backs and their hands tucked into the backs of each others' pants. They seemed to be wearing the same pair of jeans, down to the rhinestones on the back pockets, and the only difference between their hooded sweatshirts were the colors. Charity felt very old when she paid the clerk and he had a chain connecting the rings in his upper lip to those in his eyebrow.

Molly had taken her piercings out, both lip and eyebrow, after complaining loudly in the weeks before about migration. She had tiny white scars leftover, although Charity was certain that they'd fade in time -- the improvement in Harry Dresden's hand over the past few years had been incredible -- and the line of her eyebrow fell a little differently now, and her smile crinkled unexpectedly.

It wasn't the only change Molly had made recently; if Molly even stopped changing her appearance it would be far more cause for alarm than any fresh modifications she deemed necessary. She had come home that afternoon with her hair bleached beyond its natural blond and straight into white, dyed a rainbow of colors at the ends, and twisted into dreadlocks.

Charity knew her daughter. She supposed that she should have made more of a fuss than she did; it was her role, after all, and would explain Molly's self-imposed exile to her room that afternoon, under the shadow of 'studying'. But she had been mid-conversation with her sister on the phone, organizing a skating trip for Saturday, and watching the clock on the oven in case the time slipped away from her and the banana bread burnt, and if Molly still believed that Charity's concerns for her were focused entirely on her appearance, well -- it was likely she did still believe that. Molly hadn't been her oldest child for a while now, not in anything but age. It was a battle for another day.

Charity smiled at the clerk and took her receipt.

She watched the tally of gallons and dollars tick up as she pumped gas into the minivan, wrapping her other arm around herself and puffing out a chilly breath at the cold. It made her think of Daniel's dorm room at Northwestern, its constant chill and his laughter over the phone when he explained how he kept the milk on the windowsill because it was colder than his little bar fridge. She'd call him when she and the kids got home that night and see if he needed anything, how things are going, and maybe check if he'd be able to spare time from studying for his finals to go skating with them that weekend. He'd had his own rough year, especially the past month and some, and the time together could be good for them all.

She worked a few more drops out of the pump, got it up to an even number, and went back inside for her change.

She realized she was stalling the third time she squeegeed her brake lights, the cleaning water as filthy as anything she wiped from the glass. She set her jaw, cleaned off the gritty excess water, and plopped the squeegee back in its holder. She hadn't accomplished anything in her life by standing around avoiding it, and she wasn't about to start trying to now.

She left the music on while she drove, turning down an a capella rendition of 'God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen' when she went through the Starbucks drive-through, and a boys' choir was singing 'Silent Night' in the original German, their voices soaring high and clear, when she pulled carefully into a visitor stall in the parking lot, her lips quirked just a little self-depreciatively at how easy it was to find a spot. Parking would have been a convenient excuse.

The little parking lot was a wind tunnel and she shivered getting out of the van, double-checking the time - she had plenty - and setting her shoulders and the line of her mouth. She took her purse and the old, crinkled white plastic bag from the floor between the driver and passenger seats, balanced the tray from the drive-through with one hand, and bowed her head just inside the warmth of the interior, letting the last few bars of the song fade, before straightening and closing the door.

Time to see the wizard.

 

*

 

I eyed the carton, and read over the information again. The contents would be thick, creamy, calorie-delicious, and go bad somewhere around January 12th, but there were no warnings on there about feeding eggnog to pets. Maybe it's one of those things you're just supposed to know, like not to use your hair dryer in the bathtub or leave your Winnebago running on cruise control while you go fix a sandwich, so companies don't bother putting warnings on the packaging until some idiot sets out to flatten the learning curve.

"Ready to test the limits of natural selection?" I asked. Mouse blinked at me, then carefully raised a paw and held it out to me. "Close enough," I told him, and we shook on it. My hand was bigger. Barely. I raised an eyebrow. "You still growing or something? Because there's only so much floor space, you know."

Mouse wagged his tail and panted hopefully. Mister was more direct, and reached over from his perch on the counter to bat at the carton, almost knocking it out of my hand. "So that's how it is, huh?" I opened the carton and sniffed, took a long drink because I don't live with anyone who'd tell me not to, and poured myself a glass. The rest got divided up between two cereal bowls, although one definitely got the lions share.

That went to Mister. Naturally.

"All right," I told Mouse, holding his bowl in the air. He fixed his most hopeful gaze on it. "Now go easy on this. It's dairy, and you remember what happened when Molly fed you that milkshake, don't you?" Mouse tipped his head, panted so his tongue fell out the side of his mouth, and offered me his paw again. "Yeah, yeah, buddy," I told him, carefully placing the bowl on the floor. "You're a laugh riot."

Mouse's large muzzle disappeared the instant the bowl hit the ground, but it didn't sound like a black hole had suddenly manifested in my kitchen, so he was probably taking my warning into consideration. I left the four-legged parts of the household to their seasonal cheer, and being the only one above the legal limit, nabbed a bottle of _Jim Beam_ off the top of my icebox.

Hey, with age comes certain privileges. Boozing it up at the holidays happens to be one of them.

Not that I'm a big drinker or anything; but I'm not that big on the holidays either, so it's all relative. I've got nothing against the holidays, in general. I mean, okay, the merry jingle jingle of overdue credit and the last of peoples' savings in the pockets of the rich getting richer can wear the sparkle off my goodwill toward men pretty damn fast. And the fact that, here in my corner of the American Midwest, holidays mean dumps of snow and cold weather and every other idiot in the city forgetting how to drive, combined with the reality of my car being notoriously unreliable even on good-weather days is enough to make anyone's holiday spirit gauge run a little on empty.

But all in all, I can get behind the idea of the holiday season. Family, light and hope, peace on earth, good will toward all, giving being better than receiving, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It's just the practice I tend to abstain from. Not to get all maudlin or anything - I mean, I hadn't even opened the bottle yet - but the big festivities are all about family and building on childhood traditions, and I don't really have much of either. I love my brother; but we didn't grow up together. I don't remember too much of my earlier Christmases, although I'm sure my dad did what he could, and the orphanages and foster homes I bounced around between after didn't really have the resources to create any traditions I'd like to build on. Christmas wasn't Justin DuMorne's style, and Ebenezer wasn't the type to go all sappy and over-the-top on the moody teenage apprentice living under his roof. Although I think he taught me a lot more about family than anyone else had for a long time.

None of that meant I didn't have traditions. I celebrate in my own way, with a few people and a few routines. I'd gotten some sparkly pink handcuffs and some chocolates for Murphy; I'd shipped a notebook to Ivy, The Archive, along with a preprinted 'do not open until December 25th' tag and would wait until Christmas morning to jot down a note suggesting she write some words of her own. Michael, Molly, Thomas -- I was working on them.

I wasn't alone.

It was a nice feeling.

And did I mention the food? Holiday food alone is enough to keep my inner Grinch carving the roast beast.

I took a drink from my eggnog and wondered if leaving some out for my brownie housekeepers would inspire them to fill my icebox with it. If I had enough, I could just dump it all over myself in the shower. It would be heaven. An eggnog orgy heaven. Sprinkle on some nutmeg during the afterglow, and I'd be set. Me plus eggnog equals true love, happily ever after, the end.

There was a knock on my door.

I blinked, traded a look with Mouse, who was licking eggnog off his nose, and placed my glass and the bottle of whiskey carefully in the icebox. We moved to the door as quietly as we could, which is pretty damn quiet, but I let some of the tension ease out of my shoulders when Mouse's tail started to wag as we got closer.

Still, you don't survive a war without being appropriately cautious, and I readied a few defensive spells as the knock came again.

"Harry?" A muffled voice said from the other side of the thick security steel, "Harry, it's Charity Carpenter. Are you home?"

I was yanking open the heavy, poorly installed door before I even thought about it. "What's wrong?" I demanded. "What happened. Is everyone okay?" Mouse pressed against my legs, not using quite enough of his weight to knock me down, and swung his big, heavy head between my gut and Charity, who was standing just on the other side of my threshold. I could hear Mouse's tail whap whap whapping against the wall as he wagged it, so I was willing to believe that his position was more a response to my agitation than anything else.

Charity blinked at me, the confusion on her face fading to understanding in a heartbeat. "My apologies -- I didn't think. I came to visit. Nothing has happened."

My eyebrows shot up. Visit? Sure, my relationship with Charity has improved over the past five years or so that I've been teaching Molly, but we aren't exactly the best of buddies. If either of us were going to show up at the others door, it would usually be me -- and any visiting Charity and I did would be happenstance slotted in between my relationships with her husband and oldest daughter.

I glanced down at Mouse; he'd stretched out his neck and shoved his nose up under one of Charity's hands - the one not holding a tray with two coffee cups that, for the record, smelled orgasmic - and was receiving an ear rub for his impertinence.

Mouse has good instincts. They've saved my life a few times.

I took a step back to open up the doorway and murmured the word that would deactivate my wards. "I'm not inviting you in," I told her, and she nodded.

"Of course," she said, and stepped easily over my threshold. "Thank you."

Well, that was that, then. Unless she was really an extremely powerful creature of some sort that could stand to lose the strength crossing over the threshold into my home uninvited would cost her, and meager a threshold that it was, it could still pack a punch. And if that was the case, I was pretty screwed anyway.

"For you," she said, pulling one of the coffee cups free from the tray she carried.

And she'd come armed. I was done for.

I managed to restrain my lunge for the cup enough to take it gratefully, perhaps a little too eagerly still, and not snatch it out of her hand, but just barely. "Yes," I said. "Anything you want, yes."

She blinked, then huffed a dry laugh, and pulled her own vanilla-smelling cup out of the tray before holding the tray out to me. "Cream and sugar. I didn't know what you took."

"Right," I said. "So you've got the beauty, the brawn, and the brains. What does Michael add to the equation again? Here," I took the tray and put it on my coffee table, then gestured at her purse. "Hook's by the door, if you want to hang it up. Next to the popcorn tin. Shouldn't get too hairy up there. You might want to leave the coat on, though. It doesn't exactly warm up down here. Of course," I raised an eyebrow at Mouse, who had settled down to sprawl lengthwise alongside the coffee table. He was longer than it was. "It will get hairy. Just one of the many services offered here at chez Dresden."

Mouse tipped his big, heavy head to the side, ears perking and eyes mournful and abused. Charity laughed, and bent to scratch his shoulders. "I'm sure it will survive." Mouse's tail thumped against the floor, and he almost knocked her over by flinging his body weight into her hand, looking for all the world like he'd never been loved before. The big ham.

"Complete generosity of spirit," Charity said, and sat down on the corner of my couch.

"Well, some people charge for their dog hair, but given the season and all, I thought I'd start handing it out for free."

"I meant Michael," she said, putting her cup on the coffee table and smoothing her hands across her thighs, turning her eyes and attention down while she focused on the cruelty-free fur coat already stuck to her clothing. "What he offers. He would have come to visit his friend in good will and good faith, and meant nothing but kindness by it. I did not just come to visit. I came to ask something of you." She placed the white plastic bag she still held on the coffee table. "Also I brought you cookies."

"Coffee _and_ cookies," I said, settling down on the opposite side of the couch, angled in to face her. "You drive a hard bargain, Mrs. Carpenter. You must want something completely unreasonable. But, even if they're chocolate chip, I'm telling you right now. I don't care if they're the best thing I'll ever eat, I'm not ... they are chocolate chip, aren't they?" I took the plastic container out of the bag and popped the lid. "With nuts. Okay, you caught me. I was just bluffing. I'll do anything."

Charity didn't respond to my teasing, but I think I'd be more surprised if she did. She's as solid as they come, existent in some unknown blacksmithing, schedule-juggling, alpha female-matriarch-mother space-time plane of awesome that a mere mortal like myself can only hope to stare at one day without going blind.

The silence was beginning to get to me. I thought of how I'd almost gotten her husband killed; had crippled and half-blinded him for life. How I promised to train and protect her daughter, but almost five years later it was only by the final grace of a man who'd never have offered us any favors that we hadn't both been executed for her continued dabbling in warlock waters. "Charity," I said, "really. What is it?"

"I want you to teach me," she said.

That ... wasn't what I'd been expecting. I blinked, and held up a finger, signaling that I needed a minute.

"Right," I finally said. "I'm going to go out on a limb here and figure you mean something more than my world-renowned -- okay, I made that part up -- Scrabble skills."

Her lips pinched, and she looked me in the eye just long enough for the promise of a soulgaze to tug at my awareness, before flicking her gaze to redirect to my left eyebrow. "Magic," she said. "About magic."

"You gave it up a long time ago," I said as carefully as I could. I'm tall. My foot is really big when I step in it. Sometimes it pays to be cautious. "I don't know if -- Charity, it might not be possible to get it back."

It wouldn't be possible. I was about as certain of that as I was of anything, but I was doing my best to remember that she'd come here to ask me for help, something difficult enough, and regarding a subject that was both very personal and more than a little shameful to her.

"Not to do magic," she said, a little familiar exasperation in her tone. At least we were back in known territory. "About magic. _About_ magic," she said one more time, just in case I was still struggling with the concept.

Apparently I looked like I was, because she gave a sort of full body shake, starting at her forehead and working down, then spread her fingers wide. I recognized the gesture as one Molly used when I asked her questions she hadn't put her thoughts together for, so I chose the better part of valor, wrapped my hands around my coffee cup, and took a few slow drinks while Charity explained.

"I told you, about how little I learned. The circumstances. I never looked into it again, after I met Michael, and gave it up. And now, there's Molly. You've been helping her for years, and all I can tell is that she still has so much to learn -- and that I know nothing about what my daughter is risking her life for.

"It's obvious that there is a great deal more to magic than the performance of it. She fills notebooks with equations; she comes home with books to read and take notes from. You ask her questions -- her knowledge is growing, but it is so far from where it will need to be. And it becomes increasingly clear that I know less than nothing. At the beginning, after you started training her, when you and I and Michael would meet -- I almost felt like I was following when you got into specifics. Now I feel like I know less than I did then. Harry, you are at war. The wizards are at war. My daughter is at war. ... And I don't know anything about her world. Traitors, at the heart of these people who control her life? Who control yours?"

She shook her head; pressed her palms together in front of her stomach. "I never knew what Michael was going to face when he left. But I could have faith he would be safe. That he would prevail. That he would be returned to me, no matter how prepared he was to -- to not. I could trust in God. But I can't have that trust in what Molly might be doing, in where she might go. What she might face. I need to understand the world my daughter lives in, Harry. To do that, I need to learn about magic. I need to be able to help her in whatever way I can, and I can't do that if I don't know about the tools she works with."

Well, at least I knew the grasshopper was doing her homework.

I puffed out my cheeks and thought of Charity, of her sewing room and former haven in the Carpenter household, and the handcrafted armor and weapons from her forge in the garage. Charity was a smart lady, and probably understood the necessity and means of tools better than anyone I knew, myself included. She had a point, and given all that I'd done to her family already -- I couldn't justify refusing to give her a way to cope with the dangerous surrounding them.

I let my breath escape in a whoosh of air, and nodded. "All right," I said. "With some provisions."

She tipped her head and peered at me from the side. It was another gesture Molly must have learned from her mother, although it was significantly less coquettish when Charity did it. The similarity was comforting in a way. When I'd soulgazed Molly, she had essentialized into potential. It was daunting to consider, but nice to have a reminder of what the outcome could be, if I didn't fuck it all up and Molly got the chance to grow a little more and come into herself.

"Yes?" Charity said.

"Okay," I said. "One, you've got to understand that there's no standardized way of doing this. No K-to-twelve for learning magic. No curriculum I can give you a reading list from. I've helped lots of practitioners get their feet under them, and not one has been the same as any other. What I've taught Molly is a lot of the basics -- but I've been working with her skill set. Magic is just as particular to the person as it is when you're learning it. I've never tried to teach anyone without gearing the lessons around what they needed to be able to do. Primarily, control. So this is going to be a learning experience for both of us.

"And two," I held up two fingers to emphasize the importance of the point, "I want something back. This is a trade, not a favor."

"And that would be?" Charity would be one hell of a poker player, let me tell you.

"You teach me," I said. "Smithing. We make it even. A lesson for a lesson. We make this a ... partnership. Of sorts. A business relationship."

She tipped her chin up, lips pursing as she thought. "Agreed."

I nodded. "All right. Great." Stars and stones. What had I gotten myself into? "What time works for you?"

Her eyes narrowed, and I could almost see her flipping through the mental day planner pages. "Sunday afternoon," she said, "I can start with you and the forge. Wear old clothes. Come around twelve thirty. We'll have until four thirty. How are your Tuesday and Thursday evenings? I can be here between just after six and eight thirty."

I wondered how much she would charge if I gave her my whole life to organize. I bet it would be worth it. "Sounds fine," I said. "Bring something to write with."

She nodded, and picked up her coffee cup. The thread and tag from the teabag swung down one side, trapped under the lid, so I suppose it was a tea cup. I drank my coffee in long pulls until it was gone. Mouse, being the opportunistic schmooze that he is, shoved his body between the couch and the now drink-free coffee table and rested his head on Charity's lap until she scratched behind his ears.

"Molly's going to be okay," I said, holding my empty coffee cup between both hands. "My promise still stands. She's going to be okay. I'll keep her safe."

Charity sighed, and looked down at Mouse. "As recent as last summer, she was still breaking the Laws."

I didn't ask how she knew that, although I doubted Molly had been the one to tell her.

"Doesn't mean she can't stop," I said. "Her intentions are good. Her heart's in the right place, and she's good at what she does. She's been right. She just ... needs more time. Needs to learn better ways of accomplishing tasks. She's got some growing up to do."

Charity met my eyes long enough to give me a lopsided smile, and looked away before a soulgaze could start. I didn't blame her. We weren't ready for that yet. "You have a lot of faith in her for a Warden, Harry."

"Ouch," I said, and clapped a hand over my heart. "Mortal blow, there, Charity. I'll have you know that I was a messed up delinquent long before I was a Warden." I winked and she laughed once, shaking her head.

"And do you think you've grown? Moved past where you were when you broke a Law?"

"Well," I said, "there are more and more candles on my cake every year." I shrugged and added, "It's not easy. I'm not going to lie to you, Charity. You know that, better than most, I think. But Molly can do it. She just needs to want to."

And Molly had been trying to help. I tried to remember that, and not what Rosie and Nelson had looked like to my Sight. She'd made a mistake, and it had let the darkness in. It didn't mean that Molly wasn't necessarily going to spend the rest of her life making sure she didn't decide that being right was more important than following the Laws along the way; but it might make it easier. But me ... I'd wanted to kill DuMorne. I'd already had that darkness inside of me, no invitation necessary.

But I didn't need to tell Charity that.

Charity nodded, gave Mouse's ears one last scratch, and got to her feet. "I have to go. Thank you, Harry." She reached across to offer me her hand, and I rose to grab it. She had a strong grip, and I'd seen her casually swing around a sword that I'd had to use both hands just to lift. I made a mental note to get Bob to help me brew up some batches of muscle rub and variously targeted painkillers. I was going to be needing them.

Jesus. Smithing. What had I been thinking?

Mouse and I walked Charity to her car. The stairs leading up to the parking lot from my apartment were a little slick, gritty underfoot with scattered salt and crusted with layers of dirty ice along the edges, and the light at the bottom was burnt out again. I'd only replaced it a month ago, but while I was willing to let it stay out in the summer, the winter was dangerous enough without adding extra hazards for my friends. I'd fix it tomorrow.

Mouse stuck to Charity's side, and we all made it up the stairs alive. It was snowing, and a fine, fluffy layer covered the Carpenter family minivan. I grabbed my brush from the Beetle and tackled the back window while Charity handled the front. It wasn't so bad out, really. The clouds trapped the heat in, and the some of the snowflakes were large and fluffy enough to look like they might have fallen off of a nearby molting bird.

Charity started the van, and it took me a moment to hear the familiar rum pum pum of 'The Little Drummer Boy' drift out. "Drive safe," I told her. "Thanks for the cookies and the coffee. You can bribe me anytime."

"See you Sunday, Harry," Charity said. "Wear steel-toed shoes. Goodnight."

Mouse had had the presence of mind - or had been hopeful enough - to grab his lead when I'd grabbed my coat, and I clipped it to his collar, raising an eyebrow at him. "Kind of presumptive, aren't you?" I said. He panted and shook off the snow that was beginning to make him look like a walking woolly snowman.

This wasn't going to be easy, this agreement Charity and I had entered into. But, something told me that if we could do it - and knowing Charity, I was pretty certain not succeeding wasn't really an option - it would be worth doing, and I found myself humming about being a poor boy too as Mouse and I watched Charity drive away.


End file.
